Treatments consisted of feeding 2.02 kg/d dry matter of grain concentrate and ad libitum chopped grass hay as: 1) choice (grain concentrate and hay in separate feed bins), 2) top-dressed ration (grain concentrate placed on top of the hay in one feed bin), and 3) total mixed ration (TMR, grain concentrate mixed with hay in one feed bin).
The provision of grain concentrate and hay in either a choice or top-dressed situation resulted in young dairy heifers rapidly consuming the grain concentrate portion of their ration in very few, large meals before consuming the hay portion of their ration.
The provision of the 2 ration ingredients as a TMR increased the distribution of DMI over the day and reduced the amount of sorting (against long forage particles, and for short grain concentrate particles) by heifers.
Four diets were formulated using 2 cuts of alfalfa silage [short (7.9 mm) and long (19.1 mm)], combined with 2 ratios of forage to barley grain concentrate (35:65 and 60 40).
The diets without ERDP infusion were apparently deficient in degradable N because rumen microbial yield increased from 76.0 to 102.5 g N/d (P<0.05) when ERDP infusion rate was increased from 0 to 25 g/kg of concentrate, irrespective of which type of grain concentrate was used.
In this study, elongated threads of silver grains were assumed to be fibers, whereas dust-like aggregations of grains concentrated in particular laminar were assumed to reflect termination.
Although TRFLP only provides a broad perspective of a microbial community, using it in tandem with sequencing of 16S libraries and real-time PCR created a complete description of how the rumen microbiome adapts to high-grain, concentrate diets.
Although few, these reports support the hypothesis that the difference seen in udder health between organic and conventional farms may be due to the lower levels of grain and concentrates fed on organic farms.
When the grain boundaries concentrate in the tensile (compressive) stress zone, the steady-state stress lines shift up (down).
All diets contained 490 g/kg DM of a grain based concentrate, 100 g/kg DM of cottonseed and 410 g/kg DM of chopped alfalfa hay.
